LORD HARTINGTON AND MR. CHAMBERLAIN.
LORD SALISBURY appears to be a little low about Conser- vative prospects, when he makes it the chief point of his discourse to the Conservatives of the City of London that Lord Hartington is not the acknowledged leader of the whole Liberal party, his authority being ignored by Mr. Chamberlain and the Radical wing. On this single string, indeed, Lord Salisbury may be said to have twanged away, till his music must have seemed anything but sweet to the Conservative ears which were thirsting for more varied and more hopeful chords. But Lord Salisbury was so delighted with the analogy on which he had hit for the Radical wing,—tho analogy with the Circassians in the Turkish Army, of whose remorseless deeds the Turks got all the profit, while they never hesitated to ex- press their disgust at the spirit which dictated them,—that he could not let it alone. Lord Hartington, he said, would reap all the profit of Radical violence,—all the popularity it might earn at the polls,—though at the moment when the Radical violence showed itself, Lord Hartington repudiated it. And he would not only reap all the profit, as the Turks reaped all the profit of the Circassian massacres, but he would have to reward the violent party, if he came into office, by letting them dictate the measures which the official Moderates, to whom alone he would give places, would have to pass. All this looks a little as if Lord Salisbury were forecasting a somewhat dismal future, a future of defeat for himself and his party, and were consoling himself for that defeat by the anticipation of the Radical tyranny under which Lord Hartington would lie the moment he achieves success. As regards the Conservative defeat, we believe Lord Salisbury's apparent presentiment to be sound,—though, we should add, perhaps, that he disowned that presentiment, as soon as he had let the evidences of his anxiety escape him. But as regards the relation of the Radical wing to Lord Hartington's authority, it is pretty clear that Lord Salisbury's impression is not sound, and that in spite of the differences which obtain in every party, and of which Lord Salis- bury himself had ample experience, when he not only ignored, but defied the authority of his own leader, Lord Hartington will succeed very well not only in obtaining cordial co-opera- tion from the Radicals, but in learning to concede to the Radicals what he is, perhaps, a little too much disposed to deny them,—namely, the respect and reasonable independence of action, to which sincere conviction and high principle pro- perly entitle them.
The significance of the scene of Monday might easily, indeed, be exaggerated by those who did not watch it from beginning to end, and doubtless it has been so exaggerated by many Conserva- tives. Their wish to see discord springing up in the Liberal ranks is very natural, and it is, of course, father to the thought that such discord has sprung up. But the dispute happened in a manner which showed how little of set purpose on either side it really expressed, and how easy it was for both parties to that "domestic quarrel" to blunder into it. No doubt the opponents of flogging in the Army had somehow or other been induced to expect a much more complete concession on the subject than the Secretary for War announced, and that there was great disappointment, and some sense of having been mis- led, in the ranks of the Radicals, when Colonel Stanley's communication was received. Mr. Chamberlain gave expression .—probably premature and hasty expression—to this feeling, when he moved at the very beginning of the Committee to report pro- gress, in order to complain of the false hopes into which he and his friends had been led. Colonel Stanley, no doubt very justly, pro- tested against the imputation that he had intended to mislead the House, when on Saturday he had resisted the attempt to " draw " him, before the Government had had time to consider the subject fully. And hereupon Lord Hartington recom- mended Mr. Chamberlain to withdraw his motion to report progress, and to leave the discussion as to the hopes excited by the Government till the proper clause and schedule were reached on which the discussion turned. And soon after making this suggestion, Lord Hartington left the House. The suggestion was not adopted, and apparently very few of the speakers on either side of the question were desirous to post- pone the discussion. Many of the speakers explicitly objected to the postponement. Others, who entered no such objection, yet stated their opinions at length on the whole subject, without referring to the question of procedure raised by Lord Hartington and Sir Stafford Northcote at all.
Mr. Bright, for instance, from Lord Hartington's own bench, made a general speech on the subject of flogging, and was answered by a retort of the same general kind by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Mr. Trevelyan, one of Lord Hartington's most trustworthy supporters, made a general speech on the subject. Mr. Whit- bread, indeed, supported Lord Hartington's suggestion, but not without making a very good hit at the Chancellor of the Exchequer, And so the discussion went on, the Com- mittee showing no particular desire to get back to the detail of the Bill, but rather expatiating elaborately on the general question. Many of the most trusted sup- porters of the Government, like Sir H. Drummond Wolff and Lord Charles Beresford, spoke on the question without showing any impatience to return to the clause which was in hand before Mr. Chamberlain moved to report progress. Mr. Forster,—who spoke when the discussion had been continued for hours,—took the same course ; and Sir Henry James not long after followed. Thus, by tacit consent of the Committee, and not only of the Committee in general, but of many of the leaders on the front Opposition Bench, Lord Hartington's suggestion had been ignored. As the night drew on, Mr. Hopwood made a rather hot speech on the Radical side, referring to Lord Hartington as his leader, whereupon Lord Harting- ton, who had been absent during the greater part of the debate, and did not know how many of his own colleagues had virtually ignored his advice, got up and repudiated being the leader of the Member for Stockport, "or those connected with him," in language which was certainly very cavalier, not to say contemptuous. It was this speech which fired Mr. Chamberlain, who thereupon described Lord Hartington as, by his own confession, no longer the leader of the Liberal party as a whole, but only of a section of it. No doubt this speech was injudiciously indignant in tone, but it was certainly more or less provoked, and was not a casting- off of Lord Hartington's leadership by Mr. Chamberlain, but an attack upon him for repudiating the office of Leader in relation to those despised Liberals who had incurred his rebuke on this particular occasion. Sir Charles Dilke,—who has always been thoroughly loyal to Lord Hartington, and has even gone out of his way in some of his speeches to his con- stituents to express his especial confidence in Lord Hartington, — explained that Lord Hartington "had certainly attacked the Member for Stockport with considerable asperity, and it was in consequence of the feeling shown by the noble lord that the dis- cussion had been continued in a somewhat heated manner."
In fact, the real state of the case is very simple. Lord Hartington had given a met d'ordre which it had not suited a great many members of his own party,—including some of his own official colleagues, and a groat many of the opposite party,
— to obey. He was not aware, in consequence of his absence from the House, how equally divided the responsibility for keeping up the irregular discussion had been. And he con- sequently snubbed very sharply, and very inopportunely, the particular section of Liberals whom he mistakenly supposed to be principally responsible for neglecting his hint. And Mr. Chamberlain,—whose political character would, no doubt, be all the stronger for a little more frigidity,—florcely resented the unjust attack, and made something of a political "scene," of what should have been only a slight brush. If Mr. Chamber- lain committed the greater error, it was Lord Hartington who gave the first provocation.
And in judging this matter, we are certainly not prejudiced on Mr. Chamberlain's side. We hold Lord. Hartington's sug.
gestion to have been the right and wise one ; only the Com- mittee as a whole,—and the Front Opposition Bench in particular,—were not in the humour to adopt it. Clearly, to our minds, there was no real justification for the excessive suspicion expressed of the Government, Clearly, the schedule showing what class of .offences was to be punished by flogging might reasonably have been waited for. Clearly the motion for reporting progress was a dangerous waste of the time of the Committee, and was not justified by any double- dealing of the Government in this matter. As far as we can judge, Colonel Stanley's action in the whole affair was straightforward, and not wanting in conciliation. What Lord Hartington said in his first speech seems to us entirely wise and prudent. Only it was not Mr. Chamber- lain and Mr. Hopwood and that section of the Liberals especi- ally, who were responsible for not adopting it. The Com- mittee were in the humour for a general discussion on flogging, and some of the pillars of Opposition led the way in completely ignoring their leader's expression of opinion. And this being so, Lord Hartington ought clearly to have in- formed himself better of what had gone on in his absence, before coming down with so high and mighty a verdict on the conduct of a few of his own followers. We can only suppose that, being in favour himself of flogging for breach of discipline, he saw the opportunity for illustrating his own conviction in a moral sense with one or two ill-disciplined followers, though it would have been wiser to have inquired first how many of them had incurred the blame of his denun- ciation. None the less, Mr. Chamberlain's heat is much to be regretted, though perhaps the warning will be useful as well to Lord Hartington as to himself. It is clear enough from the reception given to Lord Harting- ton when he rose on Tuesday, that the Liberal party, as a whole, are perfectly satisfied with his leadership, and that they recognise both the ability and the sincerity with which he has in general discharged his functions. Indeed, were he less able than he really is, we should fear that he might rather be encouraged in the cavalier tone which is his chief dan- ger, by the obvious and eager wish of the Liberal party to wipe out the remembrance of Mr. Chamberlain's too vehement attack. But vanity is not Lord Hartington's weakness. He is far too proud a man for that ; and his strong common- sense will show him that he made a blunder on Monday night, which it will not be difficult to avoid in future. A Parlia- mentary leader must enforce some kind of Parliamentary dis- cipline. But he must enforce it impartially, and not make the section of the party which he trusts least, a scape-goat for the errors of all.
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